Is Innovation the New Black? Thoughts from McKinsey

By Steve Davis

Is “innovation” the new black? It has certainly displaced old taglines from the ’80s and ’90s that were all about “solutions” and “catalysts.” Over the past decade we’ve hailed innovation, innovators, and innovative companies as the cure for all of our woes. And if that trend weren’t enough, along comes “social” innovation, a label that has been appended to hundreds of conferences, articles, and job titles over the past few years.

But what do we mean by social innovation—and does it really matter? Is it simply the rebranding of things we’ve been doing forever? And most important, will it last longer than last year’s hemlines? Will it matter to my grandchildren someday?

In its essence, social innovation simply refers to new approaches and tools for solving societal challenges. It is not simply the repackaging of old ideas. We’ve learned a lot over the past decade about what works and what doesn’t in global health, development, education, sustainability, and many other challenging areas. We’ve learned how to design and deploy interventions. We can now have a strong perspective on which interventions have the potential to truly alter the course of a deadly infectious disease or move millions of young people out of debilitating poverty, based on the evidence of actual outcomes. We believe that the very best social innovations can transform our communities with new approaches to the complex challenges of the 21st century.

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